This and that for your Thursday reading. – Larry Elliott discusses how the stock market is reacting with disgust against rare good economic news for workers and the general public. Asher Schechter interviews Angus Deaton about the connection between monopolies, rent-seeking and burgeoning inequality. And Bill Kerry writes that we have ample reason to ask ...

This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Aditya Chakrabortty comments on the stunning turnaround experienced by the UK city of Preston after it started making a concerted effort to use public money to benefit citizens and local development. – Meanwhile, CNN Wires notes that in contrast, massize Amazon warehouses don’t do anything to add ...

Malcolm Johnston, a private citizen, has studied and written about rail transit for years. He does not have a lucrative consulting contract to promote Sky Train, the ourdated and costly beast that has for decades been rejected by transit experts around the world. Nor is he paid to promote any competing system. Altruism is uncommon ...

Malcolm Johnston is a near perfect example of a citizen activist (sorry Keith Baldrey) who wants to see public money spent with maximum efficiency. He is convinced that legitimate transit planners are pushed aside by spin doctors, consultants and other lobbyists working for vested interests, like the discredited briber, SNC-Lavalin, a BC Liberal favourite. Mr. ...

Traffic congested cities suffer not just people stressed out in cars but the exhaust their cars toss into the air. As a result of the use of automobiles asthma and other respiratory issues increase in urban areas, leading to increased health costs and harder lives. This means that if we want people living in cities ...

This and that for your Thursday reading. – Karl Nerenberg writes about Bill Morneau’s conflicts of interest – with particular attention to the NDP’s justified criticism of legislation aimed at privatizing pension management to benefit forms like Morneau’s. And Brent Patterson discusses a push back against the Manitoba PCs’ plan to privatize public services through ...

Assorted content to end your week. – Edward Harrison comments on the business-backed push to rebrand corporate control and crony capitalism as freedom. And Ryan Cooper points out that the concept of deregulation ultimately serves only to concentrate power in the hands of the wealthy few: Government regulations can be good or bad. But for ...

Regularly walking and biking are good for one’s health, but did you know taking public transit is too? That’s right just by not taking a car to work like most North Americans you can be healthier. A simple life change can have a large impact on your life, plus by not using a car you ...

Cities contain the majority of the worlds population and moving that many people is a challenge, to say the least. Each city has its own design and plan for public transportation and some are clearly better than others. Wendover Productions tackles this question and provides some nice insights into what makes a city a good ...

Many drivers think that gas tax (or their car-related taxes in general) more than cover the costs of infrastructure of cars. The reality is quite the opposite. People who don’t drive subsidize those who do. In terms of infrastructure itself we have spent more money on roads than on other forms of transit. This combination ...

Obviously public transit is great for getting people around cities and is a very scalable traffic solution. One spinoff of a good public transit system is that the streets get safer. In Canada he number of collisions increases every year with the vast majority of these collisions the result of driver error. With public transit ...

Bicycles are an amazingly fast way to get around cities and countries, as a cyclist I often roll past cars idling in bumper to bumper traffic. The cars (and their single occupants) aren’t getting anywhere anytime soon yet drivers as a group demand more and more infrastructure when really they should learn to share. In ...

Torontoist is a blog focused on, you guessed it, Toronto and they recently ran a series of posts about bike lanes. It’s not all about Toronto as they pull data from New York and tout Strasbourg as an inspiration that Toronto ought to follow. The success of cycling infrastructure in Strasbourg is a result of ...

North America was built around the car instead of people and that was mistake that needs to be acknowledged. In some places it is. The insane support the automobile gets in urban centres is starting to change, we’re seeing more bike lanes and places for people to walk. In order to make changse last and ...

There is some rising concern, and at times vitriol, about electric car drivers not paying their fair share, because they buy no gas, and therefore do not pay gas taxes, which go to maintaining roads. While this is true, it is only a sliver of the bigger picture. The more salient fact is that ...

Hmmm, maybe a crazy idea. My retro future fantasy brain on a spree. The city transit service could run a small fleet of AI Smart, small self-driving cars. Electric. We know they’re coming. A kind of car share system managed by a transit authority. You could hire one over the phone or through an app ...

Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading. – Thomas Walkom takes a broad look at the problems with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, while noting that the Trudeau Libs don’t seem inclined to address them at all. Deirdre Fulton sees the final text as being worse than anybody suspected based even on the previous leaked drafts. Doctors Without ...

Replace “driver” with Translink cop. I had a hard time reading all the way through this article, the one about Translink cops terrorizing bus passengers on Friday night. I also had a hard time reading about the two Translink cops found guilty of assault on Friday. I’m sure it was just a coincidence that they ...

The audio file below is a recording of my time with Ian Jessop May 26. We talk about credit rating agencies, provincial debt, contractual obligations, resource taxation and transit funding but we don’t deliver BC Liberal talking points like many others in media. Your browser does not support this audio Honest BC Liberals would pointed ...

Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Lana Payne writes that the great Canadian revenue debate is well underway, with far more leaders willing to push for needed taxes than in recent years: There is new political space to talk corporate taxes again, to talk about raising them. Rachel Notley, the new NDP premier of ...

This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Branko Milanovic discusses how rent theory fits into the glaring gap between productivity and wages: Bob Solow explored a couple of days ago another possibility. Going back to his own initial work on the theory of growth, some 60 years ago, Solow asked the following question: why ...

Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Lynne Fernandez properly labels the Cons’ federal budget as the “inequality budget”. Andrew Jackson discusses how we’ve ended up in a new Gilded Age in Canada, and what we can do to extricate ourselves from it. And BC BookLook reviews Andrew MacLeod’s new book on inequality by pointing ...

RossK writes about the Pro-Media Club and its implicit rulebook, which includes a requirement that no one reprove a colleague, even if overstatements and misrepresentations morph into purposeful lies. The blog world doesn’t follow those guidelines so we can point at any load of old codswallop encountered. In coverage of the Metro Vancouver transit plebiscite, ...

When financial numbers involve billions, many of us struggle to gain understanding and perspective. Usually, the beneficiaries of large scale spending are the worst sources of information. Here’s an example. A “fact-check” statement from the paid-for-by-taxpayers Mayors council website says: A “Yes” to Transit vote would cost average households $125 a year. Readers are invited ...

The good doctor at The Gazetteer diagnoses a similarity between issues underlying the now debated transit sales tax and the late and unlamented HST. RossK is focused on the tax ‘shiftyness’ involved in both. Quite right. BC Liberals have slowly shifted away from progressive taxation, preferring revenues from fees and taxes that have greater impact ...